Matt Oxley (Opal Co-Founder) — Selling Everything, Scaling to the US, and the Real Founder Mindset

Shamil Malachiyev: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this episode of The Founder's Code podcast. Today with us we have an amazing guy — really chill, authentic, somebody I've had a lot of down-to-earth founder conversations with — Matt Oxley. Hi, Matt.

Matt Oxley: Good morning, mate. How are you?

Shamil Malachiyev: Very good, thanks. How was your Friday?

Matt Oxley: Friday's good. I fly to the States next week, and we're entering crazy holiday season over here. But it's all good.

Shamil Malachiyev: Just for everyone listening: Matt is one of the very few people I know of who has successfully started a company in the UK and expanded into the US. And it wasn't done with just paid advertising and things like that — Matt is the kind of person who just hands-on flew to the US. And he'll be sharing some of that story today. But to kick things off, I wanted to ask: what were you like as a kid?

Matt Oxley: Crikey, getting straight in there. I think as a kid I was fairly tenacious. I was maybe single-minded. But one of the things I do reflect on is that in my early years, I didn't really have the confidence that I have now. I wasn't shy, but I was a driven kid — a driven kid who maybe failed to have the confidence that was needed in those early years.

Shamil Malachiyev: What was adding to that drive? How did you find it?

Matt Oxley: I think I found the drive through osmosis. Both my parents were born and raised working-class individuals in the north of England, and what I observed and absorbed from them was just a really high work ethic. And I think that took me through into my entrepreneurial career. You can outsmart me, you can outthink me, but you can't outwork me. That was the one thing that I had — my work ethic — and I would never give up. Like I said: tenacious. So I think that's a huge component of the entrepreneur I am today — drive and work ethic. Because I truly believe that if you work the problems, you're going to find the solutions.

I also think experience is the greatest thing in the world. It really is, because what it allows you to do is be more confident in the decisions you're making, and feel more at peace with the decisions you're making along the way. So there's a really nice dynamic when you have confidence through experience — failing being one of them, succeeding being the other — and then work ethic. And I can only speak from my personal experience, because every entrepreneur is different, but over the last couple of years I've really been relishing that point that I got to.

Shamil Malachiyev: And what helped you get up? You've talked about the bits of failure, when your confidence just drops and you think: maybe I'm just delusional, maybe it's not for me. What kind of self-talk did you give yourself to pick yourself up?

Matt Oxley: I think there are maybe two sides to this. One is knowing when to get up — there's the Churchill "never, never, never give up," there's "fall down seven, get up eight." There are so many lovely and beautiful sayings around continuing to go. And for me, it's always been taking a point of reflection on that failure and understanding why it happened. Because I really believe in chapters. One chapter probably won't work, but then it's: what did you learn from it to take onto the next chapter? It's about absorbing — constant evolution — and putting that primary to your objectives, which is: I always want to learn. It's having that point of reflection and knowing what you've learned.

And this is the same with success. I think failure is more of an abrupt lesson. Success is like, "oh yeah, we're killing it" — and then maybe you don't take the time to reflect on: why is it successful? What is it we've actually done? So it's knowing to take the time.

But the third one, that I think people don't talk about enough, is knowing when to give up. Because there is a world where you're pushing this thing, and you're trying it and trying it and trying it, and it's just not working. And it might be time to cut your losses and really step back and go: all right, what did I learn there, and what can I take on to the next chapter? And it might be different. So I think that's an important part of being an entrepreneur as well, because everybody pivots, everybody adjusts, everybody changes. And this comes back to confidence — having the confidence to do that.

Shamil Malachiyev: That last thing, the third one, really hit there, because I've had a very similar situation with the supplements startup I was doing. After two years of trying to break even — especially in Ukraine, after the war started, it was really hard to find the demand for it — I was faced with a situation where I have an existing market, I'm trying to improve the sales and the CAC-to-LTV ratios, but I'm feeling like this energy could be spent a lot better, with a better ROI, somewhere else. But I was facing the same sunk cost fallacy, I think it's called, where you've invested so much that to just drop all of that was really hard. But I've taught myself that when you do that, you free up so much more energy and potential to divert to something that can actually have a much bigger impact.

Matt Oxley: Yeah. And I totally echo that, because I firmly believe that all you've got is tokens of time. You've got tokens of energy that you can devote to something. And it's always about ensuring that those tokens of time and those tokens of energy are going to get the reward and the return, because otherwise you're spending that currency — because all you have is time and energy, right, at the end of the day. So are you spending those tokens in a way that's going to get the reward? And if the bank balance is constantly zero, zero, zero — like, shit, right? OK. Maybe, maybe not. But then it comes back to the salient point, which is having the confidence and the ability to go: all right, OK, we might need to pivot here. We might need to close this down and start something else. And I think it's being confident in doing that and trusting yourself as an entrepreneur: whatever situation we get ourselves into, we can get ourselves out.

And I think that comes with your core value set — tenacity, work ethic, et cetera — but also, and I say this being an older entrepreneur now, that confidence of experience. What I started to create was a very good gut feel. You can look at metrics, you can look at everything, you can do the product-market-fit interviews and get the intelligence. But you've got to conclude all that in a gut feel and then make a decision. And I think that gets honed over time — and don't be afraid of constantly honing it, because that's a great muscle to have. Where you can go: OK, I understand the business — you can pitch it to me, I can play it back to you, I can understand the mechanics of it and how it works — but also I can make a judgment call on: all right, what do you need? Do I think it's going to be a good one to invest in, support, et cetera?

Shamil Malachiyev: But at the time, it's so hard to separate yourself from the business. Obviously now you look back and you're like: logically, the business model is not great, the market you chose is not great, the product you chose for the market wasn't perfect — there are so many other things you could have been doing which would be a better fit. But at the time, you don't think the business model is a failure. You think: it's me who's the failure.

Matt Oxley: Yeah — but this is where I think you've got to really separate the emotional side of it. And it's so hard. It's really easy for me to sit in front of you and just go, "you've got to separate it." But once you take the emotional side out of it, you can callously and critically look at the business and go: all right, we've done it for 18 months, we've had X amount of return, our engagement rates are excellent. You'll be able to look at it objectively and critically, rather than going: I've put X amount of money in, all of my network knows about it — am I going to be a failure if I turn it down or adjust it? You've always got to take the emotion out of it, because otherwise you're not going to be making clinical decisions — you're always going to have the emotional baggage on your shoulders.

And it's such an easy thing to say and such a hard thing to do. So I just want to stick on that — this isn't like, "hey, lose the emotion." It's like: well, that's really hard, dude, when I've put 14 years of my life, or whatever it is, into this, every dollar that I've invested is in this business — and then you're sat there telling me to take the emotion out of it. I totally get it. It's a hard thing to do.

Shamil Malachiyev: And if we go back to your early days — were there any people, public figures, teachers, family members who were an inspiration or an idol for you?

Matt Oxley: Well, yeah — I go back to my parents, because of the work ethic. That's something I'm really grateful I received from them, and I think with that comes the tenacity, which allowed me to create the drive that I have and continue to have. Back when I was growing up, being an entrepreneur really wasn't a thing. I mean, I'm not from medieval times — it's not as if I was best mates with King Arthur — but it wasn't "do you want to be an entrepreneur?" People owned small businesses. So for me it wasn't a rite of passage, "oh, I want to be that."

What happened was: I was really bad at school. Like, really bad at school. I was dyslexic, and that wasn't diagnosed till later on. What ultimately happened was that I failed my exams and I wasn't allowed to continue at the school I was at. I applied to a college, and I got in on the premise that I had to retake my English literature — I had to do that at night school. So every Wednesday, my mum used to drive me to night school to allow me to continue my education. And it wasn't until I went to college, where I did a BTEC diploma in business and finance, that the penny dropped for me. Because at school I was like: I'm learning about triangles — how the hell is a triangle going to help me in normal life? I couldn't make that leap from what I was learning at school into everyday life. And it wasn't until my BTEC, in business and finance, where it was: all right, here's profit and loss. Ah — I get why we're doing maths now. Here's the business plan, and marketing — oh, I get why English is important. It wasn't until I was presented with how businesses run, and the mechanics of it, that I was able to connect those dots.

And that was when the penny dropped and the world changed for me a little bit. I was absolutely devoted and besotted by understanding businesses. That was at college, when I was 16, 17 years old — and then it progressed. I went to uni and continued it. I scraped along; I was never a star student or whatever, but I got my degree. And that, to me, was where education really helped me, because it gave me the foundations for understanding business. I'll always be grateful for that.

Shamil Malachiyev: You've touched two really interesting topics here. I can really relate on the educational side. I had the good fortune of my parents being able to send me to the UK when I was 15, and I went through the A-levels. And at that point I wasn't sure — why am I doing all this? Why am I studying physics, chemistry? Because my parents told me: this is the direction you should go. And then I remember the day when I completely flunked my A-levels. I'd had offers from LSE, from Oxford — I was like, ooh, look at me with so many offers. But then I flunked all of them and I had to go through clearing to York. And that really humbled me. Only in the third year did I realize: IT, systems, the future, technology — that's what drives me. Only then did I understand: that's what I want to study; this is the information that's going to be useful to me. And then I went into my master's in business and IT, and that's where it really shone.

And at the moment, what we see with the educational system is that it's changing. We have ChatGPT, which holds all of the information and knowledge. So you can first choose what you want to do, and then, at every step of the way, if you want to learn something — there you go, you just type in the prompt. And that really sticks in your mind, because you need that information. It's not just random information somebody gave you — like triangles: it was the Pythagorean theorem, let's memorize it.

Matt Oxley: Yeah, totally. I've got nephews that are actually going through this space at the moment — they're just finishing their GCSEs, and it's: "what do you want to do?" "I don't know." And I'm like: the world is your oyster. To your point, it used to be very functional employment roles you were going into — you want to be a lawyer, an X, a Y, a Z. But now, through technology, you can literally advance yourself and start anything. So my point is: I just think it's such a ripe world for an entrepreneur at the moment. In my day — and again, I'm not medieval, but I'm a generation behind that — getting nothing into something used to take ages and a lot of people. It was quite a lift. But nowadays you can get nothing into something so quickly. You can get a first rev of a product into market without having to pay anybody anything — you could do that in days, where it used to take months, if not years, before.

So I really do believe we're at the start of the golden age of entrepreneurship. And I really encourage anybody in education to actually think about it as an opportunity and as a career path, because now it's extremely easy and accessible, where before it wasn't.

Shamil Malachiyev: I think that all happened around 2006, 2008, when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and that just popularized the whole industry. And that's the moment when I was just graduating, so for me it was —

Matt Oxley: Because what you need is proof points that this is possible. Why not me? Why can't I be that person that does it, that creates it? And I think we're going to see just a plethora of future entrepreneurs coming through with the technology that's readily available.

Shamil Malachiyev: And another topic I want to touch on with you: you said your biggest asset was always the hard work ethic. And I can relate to that — I was always like: work hard, work in your evenings, five till twelve, you still have time to do an extra bit of work. But then you look at Europe trying to make Fridays off, working three, four days a week. Then you look at Gen Z, who cannot work hard, who need a really good work-life balance — more towards life than work. Do you think that generation is doomed, or do you think they're playing on a different field than we had to play on?

Matt Oxley: Firstly, I'd say that if you go back to the institutional workplace — nine to five, Monday to Friday — I think that's evolved. The internet, remote working, everything has evolved to where, especially if you're an entrepreneur, that doesn't really exist. Don't give me boundaries: I work when I want to work, and I know when I'm most productive. So I think the nine-to-five world is a little bit antiquated in today's global, networked society.

But I do believe in balance. I really do believe in balance, and I do believe in founder health and wellbeing. And I think one of the things everybody has to be on the lookout for is burnout, quite honestly. What burnout is to me is: you're putting too many eggs in one basket at one particular time, you're going at it for too long, and you're not getting that release and that balance from the other sides of your life. And again, this is just a personal point of view, but you've got to get the balance right. It's not a work-life balance, because my work is my life. So I find that old statement very hard. I think it's a balance between my mental wellbeing; my physical — am I working out; spiritual — am I balanced, am I connecting with the people that I should; and then the professional element as well: am I motivated? Am I driven? Am I inspired? So it's not work-life balance — it's more this circle of those four components that you've constantly got to be making sure you get as near to the bullseye as you possibly can.

And I spent a long, long time — dare I say it — working on myself to understand those snippets of the circle. How do I work at those every single day? How do I create that balance? It's a daily quest, because I don't think it's a given thing, and I don't think it's an easy thing. But what one has to show, in my humble opinion, is a desire to get there. And then you will create a natural balance in your life, and I think you will be a better person in totality. And again — this is just Matt's woo-woo thinking, but that's the conclusion I've certainly come to.

Shamil Malachiyev: I used to think a lot about acceleration. We can go through life at a certain speed — say, five kilometers an hour. Working on yourself, mental wellbeing, making sure you're happy, energetic, going to the gym — all of these things provide you acceleration. I'd call it accelerating yourself. It's like sharpening your axe: you go to the woods and see a woodcutter who just keeps chopping, and you say, hey, your axe isn't sharp anymore — it's quite blunt. And he says: sorry, I don't have time to sharpen it, I have to chop the wood. It's all about sharpening your axe and preparing yourself to sprint — and feeling well while sprinting, instead of getting burnout. Seeing those triggers early and actually working on them, to put yourself in the best position to keep sprinting for a long time. And that's good for your family, good for your company, because everything else revolves around that.

Matt Oxley: Yeah. And also I think there's an element of ensuring that you know yourself. Because there's so much garbage and clickbait out there — on LinkedIn especially, it's like: "this is what good entrepreneurs should do, this is what it's like." Just take the time to reflect on you and what you need, because that clickbait — that's not real. What's real is you, what motivates you, and what you need to remain balanced. And I like your sharpening-the-axe idea, because — and this comes back to the nine-to-five mentality — don't feel you should be chained to a desk. Some of the best ideas come when you're out walking the dog, or just outside getting a fresh perspective. Entrepreneurs sometimes feel like: I'm not in front of my keyboard, therefore I'm not productive. And I'm like: well, at the cost of what? You're not using the whole of your brain. Get outside, let yourself think freely for a minute. I would bet that most of the solutions are there when you're just stumbling into them.

So yeah, I think it's about knowing oneself. Because those of us with high work ethic and high drive — we look in the mirror and we assess ourselves just by looking in the mirror. All right, you did well today. No, you weren't quite at it. Because to me, that's the only individual — plus those close to me — that could ever really judge me. So it's really important that you have that full perspective, that you're really leaning in and understanding that not everything brilliant is going to come from sitting in front of the keyboard.

Shamil Malachiyev: Jumping off this — do you think it's important for founders, especially because they have a lot of responsibility for a lot of people, for the company, for investors, to add therapy sessions to their life? Instead of just reflecting or journaling every day and going through it one by one — do you think actually going to therapy and devoting that time every week would be an essential part of staying healthy, wellbeing-wise?

Matt Oxley: I come back to: you have to find out what you need. Because I'd hate to go, "oh yeah, therapy is going to be great for everybody" — it really does depend on the makeup of the individual. And for me — and it took a lot of work to get into it — it was: I need to do the personal work, I need to do the physical work, I need to do the spiritual work to understand my fulfillment, and then the emotional. You've really got to understand what you need to allow you to sharpen your axe. And I think that's the journey we're all on, and I don't think you ever complete it. I really do not — because you have to be a constant work in progress.

And this is part of the joy of being an entrepreneur. I say to people: if you're an entrepreneur, without knowing it you're doing an MBA program every single quarter, but you will not know what module you're doing until halfway through the quarter. "Oh shit, I'm doing legal this quarter. OK, cool." Or last quarter — "oh yeah, I was doing finance. OK, I got that now." And that's part of the joy: you don't know what you're getting until you turn up. So part of the joy, I really believe, is knowing that you're constantly going to be evolving and growing — that comes into the chapters methodology — but also wanting to learn and grow. That has to be a clear desire from the individual, because growth is so important to an entrepreneur.

So how do you go out and find that, and how do you find your balance? There's no playbook or one rule. I think what I'm trying to do by talking about founder mental wellbeing is make it a topic of conversation. Because if you're a founder and you've raised cash, there's that insane pressure to just constantly drive — go, go, go — and no real time for that personal reflection. That's why I'm so passionate about discussing it, and making sure people have that time, and making sure VCs and other founders are versed in this as well. If you're not looking after your founders — what are you doing? It's such an important aspect of any investment partnership: protect your assets. It's like a record label — you've got to protect the talent that's singing the songs. It's very simple.

Shamil Malachiyev: That touches on a lot of different topics. One of them: usually people with, let's say, a psychological need to prove something to somebody — you wouldn't say they're the happiest, healthiest people wellbeing-wise, but usually these are the people who provide the best returns for VCs. And if you look at founders this way — they're constantly in the hamster wheel, going at it 24/7, not the healthiest or happiest version of themselves. And they've created this world where everybody's dreaming about the day of receiving funding, to be able to get their vision out there. But in reality, most of them don't even realize what they're running from.

Matt Oxley: Yeah — I mean, I think there are phases in your life where it's OK to just charge hard. I really do. And I'd hate to classify it by age — it's less about age and more about where you are. Is everything on red, there's no other choice, and off we go? I've been in those instances, where I've sold everything I have to try and make something work, and there's no other option. But I do believe it comes with an element of experience, where you want to get out the other end. It's like: I can't keep everything on red. I want to create a more balanced life and perspective, and grow incrementally in the areas that I want to grow in. And I think that's a time period. It's not an age thing — it's a how-long-you've-been-in-the-game thing, quite honestly.

Because I must speak to probably 20, 30 founders a week. And I love the individuals who are like: yeah, I'm doing this, that and the other, nothing else matters, and I was up till two o'clock last night working on this. Yes! That fills me with excitement, because they're just so driven — driven on one particular thing, which is making their business successful. I get huge amounts of energy from that. And that honestly is what it needs when you're at that certain point: you're raising capital, or you've raised capital and now you've got to put those funds to work and prove the 10x return for the investor. You're on that treadmill, and it's an incredible treadmill to be on — "wow, we're doing it." So look, this whole wellbeing thing should be embraced at the particular time when it's most appropriate to you. If I went to some of the founders I work with today and said, "you should think about balance," they'd be like: dude, I don't have time. And I'm like: yeah, OK, I got you — because it depends what chapter they're in.

But I know they're going to get to a point where it's: oh, I need to be more balanced. I need to think about my mental health, my wellbeing, my relationships with everybody — because I can't keep working 18 hours a day. There'll be a point everybody gets to — that element of self-reflection. And here's the thing: I'm there. But wow, those chapters prior to that are just incredible. And yeah — you should be betting on yourself, you should be putting everything on the line, you should be building generational businesses, and it should occupy every spare moment and brain cell that you have. Because that's growth, and it's what you're learning through those chapters as well.

Shamil Malachiyev: And if we look at the Matt who hadn't had all of this experience, when he was just starting his first ventures — could you go back to that? Maybe tell us a couple of stories and what you learned from them.

Matt Oxley: Yeah. So I guess I did my first entrepreneurial initiative when I was about 13. I had a paper round — in the UK, you have to be 13 to get a paper round. Cool: earning money. But what I realized is that 11- and 12-year-olds couldn't have paper rounds. So I thought: maybe there's an angle here. I signed up for more paper rounds — in the village I lived in, I had every single paper round — and what I used to do is contract them out to the 11- and 12-year-olds and take a cut of what they were making. I was probably the highest-paid 13-year-old in the village. But I got found out, and fired. That was probably my first foray into the drive — and into seeing the angle.

That's something I've always done: try to see the angle on everything and understand the business model. It's something geeky that just happens in my brain — I look at something and go: I wonder how that works, I wonder how that makes money, that's interesting. So that was my first foray into it, and I was like: OK, this is quite fun, this is quite interesting.

And then my world is kind of two parts: before Opal, and after we started Opal. Prior to 2011, I'd call myself a scrappy entrepreneur. I was doing music magazines, music labels. I was involved in an IPO when I was 23 years old. I created and ran a number of agencies, one of which I sold. It was thing after thing — but again, these were the chapters. These were the journeys, what you're learning to take to the next one. It was always a stepping stone. And it's not just ideas — it's honestly your network as well, because you're putting yourself out there, you're connecting with like-minded people. I think one of the key, key things in being an entrepreneur is really respecting and understanding the currency of relationships. It really is. I really encourage every single entrepreneur: you've got to kiss the frogs. You've got to get out there. You've got to be building relationships. Some are going to last for a long, long time; some aren't. But you've got to get out there and put yourself in a situation to understand which ones are going to last for a very long time.

Shamil Malachiyev: There are founders who are just sitting there with their co-founder, not speaking to anyone else, working on the product 24/7 without making use of building external relationships. Can you give us maybe two or three tips: first, how to find out who to build those relationships with, how to maintain them, and how they come to help you in the future of building the venture?

Matt Oxley: Yeah. Here's the thing — I say this all the time: if we're just sat there, a few people in our own little bubble, building what we think, it might not shock you, but that's probably not going to sell very well. If you're building it just with your co-founders, you've got to get into the market and you've got to test it. You've got to iterate. You've got to speak to people. Is this marketing message working? Is this product working? Is this feature we've built working? What do you think? Because if you're building it in an isolated little group, you're not getting that input, you're not getting that feedback. And that's going to be so important as you iterate, because what you put in market first is not what you're going to end up with. It's got to go through iterations to get product-market fit.

So there's that — but also people that can advance your business. I firmly believe in networking, I firmly believe in relationships. And honestly, it's uncomfortable, but you've just got to get out there. You've got to go to these really shitty events — "Hey, I'm Matt, nice to meet you." They're bad, they're cringe, and everybody hates it. But select the ones you're going to go to. What do you want to achieve? Are you after an investor? Are you after a connector? Are you after business partners? Really think about what you're trying to achieve, and then get out there and hustle, honestly, and network. And I know it's hard, and I know it's awkward, and I know it's weird. But you kind of have to — because also, if you're trying to raise capital, you're demonstrating the hustle to anybody that's going to put a dollar into your business. That's the way you build a network that will eventually work for you.

Shamil Malachiyev: I like that — so you're basically showing the people you want to trust you that you're OK with going into the cringe for the sake of success.

Matt Oxley: Well, ultimately what it comes down to — if we're talking about it from an investor standpoint — is: does this founder have the tenacity? Do they have the drive? Are they able to go and make it happen? Are they going to get out of their bubble and go make it happen? Because you're up against other founders that are going to do that. They are going to go and hustle and network and build those relationships. You need to go and match that other founder. You've got to out-hustle everyone. That's ultimately what it comes down to.

Shamil Malachiyev: And what would you advise for people who are at those networking events thinking: what should I do? How do I make my first acquaintance? It's really hard to go through that barrier. You see all these other people, you see Matt going "hi, hi," being really engaging with people. How do people make that shift in themselves? Because nothing bad is going to happen — you could just go up to every single person and say: hi, my name's Shamil. Nobody — you won't suffer or anything. So why aren't we utilizing that? It seems like such a simple shift.

Matt Oxley: I think what we're very comfortable with is sharing things digitally, but one of the things we haven't got back to yet is sharing things in the physical space. It's still weird and awkward. So to answer your point: I would go with intention. I'm going to this event on Thursday night — why am I going? What would success look like? And treat it like that. Treat it like a project. I'm going in here, I'm going to spend physical, emotional and time currencies — what do I want to get out of it? OK: I want to go meet two VCs. Cool. I want to connect with potential partners. I want to connect with a founder that has done this before, that maybe I can bring on as an advisor. That, to me, is the best way to do it, because then you go with an intention. You're going to have the varied conversations — "oh, I met Brian, Brian's really interesting, and Deborah's really interesting" — but did I achieve what I set out to do? And it's going to be different based on where you are as a business and what you need. But I think it's always good to go in and ask: what is my intention, and did I achieve it? Because if you're a founder, these events are emotionally tolling. You're putting this stuff out there — I'm outside my comfort zone, maybe, and I've got to be this character. That takes its toll. But did I get the rewards from doing it?

Shamil Malachiyev: And with you having been in the founder's seat, and now being hands-on in the VC field — are you looking at founders differently from the way you looked at yourself?

Matt Oxley: Not really. Because the core of it remains: good founder, good team, good idea, good business model, opportunity. Those are the foundations, however you look at it. I think what I do is look at founders as to whether they have the ability to grow. Right — you're the CEO, you're the founder, you're X number of people now. What would you be like if you were 120 people? Can you go on that growth curve, and therefore go and be 120 people? Do you get altitude sickness at a certain point? So I do look at it that way — whether investing, advising or whatever it might be.

Shamil Malachiyev: How do you probe for that?

Matt Oxley: A lot of it comes down to speaking to a founder: understanding their values, understanding why they're driven, understanding their commitment to the idea, and ultimately how they're going to operate the business. And I think it comes down to: what sort of cultural leader are they going to be? Are people going to follow that individual? Is it a command-and-control philosophy? That, to me, is fundamentally important, because you need the team behind you to build the things you're going to build and ultimately be successful. So I like to get under the layers of the onion and really speak founder-to-founder with that individual.

Shamil Malachiyev: When you say you want to understand why they're driven — are there bad types of drive and good types? Maybe you can give some examples.

Matt Oxley: Yeah — I think if somebody's like, "I want to make $100 million," you're like: hmm. OK. You're not committed to the idea. You're committed to the financial reward at the end of this period. I always look for founders that really understand their values and the team they want to build. I don't think there's strictly good or bad — there are nuances to everything. But I really like to peel back the onion and understand the human behind the founder. Because sometimes founders play characters. And I'm sure you've seen this — there's probably a Matt-founder character that I have to click into and play, and there's going to be a Shamil-founder character that you play, and Deborah will have one and Brian will have one. So it's: how do you peel back those layers? What are the insecurities that you have? And bringing that out. I feel I'm in a very privileged situation to do that, because I speak founder, and I failed a lot. So what I can do is go in there and go: I bet you haven't screwed up as much as I've screwed up. So let's just talk from a human perspective about where you are and what you need. And why are you on this journey? What is it? Is it money? Is it that you feel the character needs to do this? Is it because you've taken a heap of cash from a VC and you've got no other choice? What is it? It's getting into that human side that intrigues and interests me, because I think that says a lot about a founder.

Shamil Malachiyev: And what would be the three red flags for you when speaking to a founder and making the decision of whether you want to work with them?

Matt Oxley: I don't think there are three specific ones — a lot of it is gut. Are you a good human? Do you have your arms around this product, this challenge, this opportunity? Are you going to lead with your values and your heart? And do you have the tenacity that it takes to give up everything for a period of time — because that's what it's ultimately going to take. I had a really, really interesting moment from somebody early on in my entrepreneurial journey. He stood on a stage, and he'd just exited — a great exit. Somebody asked him: what does it take? What does it take to be successful? And he answered: everything you've got. And I was like — whoa, that was deep.

But that is where certain founders are. And this comes back to your point: some people are going to try to short-circuit it, constantly trying to find cheat codes — "I don't want to give up my holidays." It's like: you're going to have to. Everybody's got their war stories of things they had to sacrifice. And it comes down to: what are you prepared to sacrifice to make this successful? It's going to take everything you've got. And that's hard to digest, because what it's saying is: I can't maybe have some of the nice things that I've got. I can't have this peaceful world, perhaps. I've got to sacrifice. And then: is the sacrifice I'm going to make worthy of the end result? I can't answer that — that's for every single entrepreneur to step back and ask themselves.

Shamil Malachiyev: And with being a good human, as you've said — what I've noticed on my path is that there were a lot of conflicts in my mind. In an IT company two years ago, I realized that the CEO I had wasn't very good at the sales part of the company — she couldn't build that function. As a founder, I realized: I have to fire her, I have to find somebody better for my business, because I'd devoted a year to trying to bring that person up to speed, but the person just didn't have those capabilities, that drive, that tenacity. But then there's the part about being a good human towards people, and there's being a good founder towards the business — especially when it comes to firing people who are underperforming. How did you go through those moments?

Matt Oxley: Yeah — but I would comment that being a good human is being transparent and honest with people as well. And I think it's more about how it's handled than the values base of it. To me, you would always want to be transparent and honest with an individual if they're not performing: hey, are you good? I've just noticed that X, Y, Z — and if we look at the data... How you approach it is so important. And then there might be a really interesting piece where it's: "hey, I'm really struggling. Thank you so much for bringing it up. But maybe I'm not the right person for this." And then together, collectively, you can make the right decision. I think that all comes through being a good human, but also how you approach things. If it's "we've got to sit down, I don't think it's working" — that's not being a good human; that's "I've just taken an HR pill and I've got to follow the course of what they tell me." But if it's: hey, look, let's go grab a coffee — this is what I'm noticing. Are you good? Anything I can do? What do the next six months look like? Let's really unpack this together. I've got your back. What do you think? That's how I would approach it, anyway.

Shamil Malachiyev: Can you talk a little bit about your current most exciting endeavor — helping startups with US expansion?

Matt Oxley: Yeah. So before, I talked about pre-2011. Maybe I can tell a little bit about Opal, my story to the US, and then what I'm currently doing. 2011 — this is after agency life — I co-founded Opal with a couple of American colleagues that I met on a project at Nike, and we got angel money from the UK and the US. Over those two years, from 2011 to 2013, it was evident that the future of the business was in America. That's where the talent was, that's where the brands were, that's where the people were. So 2013 was a really life-changing year for me, because I sold absolutely everything I had and moved to the US. Luckily, my girlfriend at the time — who I dragged there, and who is now my wife — came with me. And we just went on this crazy ten-year journey. We raised capital with Madrona and Accel. We grew the company to hundreds of people. It was a remarkable, remarkable journey of success and growth and scale and people and culture and talent — and having go-to-market fit, not having go-to-market fit; product-market fit, not having it. It was this tapestry of learning, and it was chapters: all right, what are we learning this month?

Then about three years ago, my wife and I made the decision to come back to the UK. We'd had two American kids over there — I joke that one morning they came down with American accents and we were like, whoa. But it was very much based on the fact that we wanted to raise our kids with UK foundations. So we moved back. And what I did is I found myself in this really interesting world, where I was starting to explore why more UK venture-backed companies were not going on the same kind of journey I'd been on. Why were they not going to the US? The US is the land of opportunity — if you put a TAM, SAM, SOM slide together and you've got venture backing, that's the addressable market you've got to go to. So it was really understanding what the blockers were. Why was this not happening more frequently?

And I think there were a number of things. The first one: not many people like me, who'd been on that journey, came back — no idiots like me came back; they furthered their careers in America. And the second fundamental was maybe an element of lip service being paid to US expansion, because not many of the VCs really had operators working in them. It was like: here are ten things you should do. There was nothing executable — no framework people could get their heads around. So that's really what we do today. I'm a partner at US Expansion Partners, and we help people go from the UK to the US. And we're very privileged: we work with a top echelon of founders who are building generational companies — the ones that are motivated, inspired, and see the opportunity of going to the US. And it's everything from tyre manufacturing to nanotechnology to working on airplane wings, all the way through to SaaS. It's such an amazing variation of businesses and founders. It's really inspiring.

Shamil Malachiyev: And what does it entail? Is it mostly looking for VC partners, M&A opportunities, or companies that can help you scale with go-to-market?

Matt Oxley: Typically businesses come to us, and we say that our ICP very much is: You've got to have 2 million annual recurring revenue, because what that shows to us is you've got product-market fit, and you've got to have 5 million in the bank, because going to the US is fairly expensive. That is the sweet spot of the ICP. And what they're looking to do is three fundamental things. One: set up, launch and establish their business. That's getting a location — where's your office going to be based? — setting up an LLC, and the boring stuff like tax, immigration, et cetera. We set you up so you can legally do business in the US. The second bit is operations: how you're doing payroll and all those other elements that keep the lights on. And the third one is scale — and that's the points you mentioned: fundraising, go-to-market evolution, talent, et cetera. We do the first two, but the third one is the really interesting one, where, for example, we can help you with your whole go-to-market offering and really understand: how many people will this take? A two-year P&L. What revenues will you generate? What market are you attacking? What is your motion behind doing that? Some really interesting work that we partner with people on.

Shamil Malachiyev: And for any founders who are listening and thinking "that's me, I need that" — what are the next steps for engaging?

Matt Oxley: Hit me up. Let's talk.

Shamil Malachiyev: What's the best platform to reach you?

Matt Oxley: Hit me up through LinkedIn. That's the best way.

Shamil Malachiyev: There are a lot of topics that I would additionally like to cover, and a lot of moments where I was stopping myself from going deeper into those experiences this time. I know that you're short on time. I think we can call it an episode. That was freaking amazing.